Otherworld - Episode 16: Everything Goes Black

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

When he was 14, Russell worked a summer job at his dad's construction company. The day in question was just like any other until a terrible storm rolled in. While racing back to base camp on an ATV, he hit a fallen log and was sent flying through the air toward serious injury or death, but instead of meeting that fate, he wakes up on a sunny day, in what seems like a completely different timeline. Could this be an instance of Quantum Immortality? To see photos related to this episode, click here Subscribe to Otherworld on Patreon for exclusive content and bonus interviews Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter  If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your full story at [e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. So I've been sitting here for quite a while trying to figure out how I'm going to introduce this episode because there's a lot of ways to interpret this story you're about to hear. And I think everybody's going to have their own very unique reaction to it. Me personally, I find the story very profound. And I've been thinking about it a lot ever since I did this interview. You know, I of course love hearing people. paranormal stories, but for me, personally, what I'm most interested in is how these people react

to these extreme moments in their life and how these moments factor into their life as they move forward or how they don't factor in. And I think this is a very interesting case of that, for me, at least. But I anticipate that everybody's going to have their own reaction. And I think that's good. So it's probably best if I just start this one out and let the person tell the story themselves. This comes from a guy named Russell. He's a woodworker, and he's actually been working since he was 13 years old, believe it or not. His dad owned a construction company, and he's been doing construction since he was old enough to be out there. Very hardworking guy.

Serious, buy the book, numbers type guy, not a type of dude you would expect to be emailing a paranormal podcast. And I'm pretty sure that Russell himself was very surprised to find himself emailing me. So I think you're really going to enjoy this story. It's best if I let him explain it himself. This is episode 16. The title is Everything Goes Black, and you're listening to Otherworld. My name is Russell Wild,

and I experienced a pretty interesting day once when I was 14 years old. I have been working. since I was about 13 years old, mainly doing, like, when I was 13, obviously, couldn't get a job at a restaurant or anything. So I would do, I would, like, mow lawns. I would help out doing, like, random trade work as, like, a general labor, things like that, just because I always loved being able to have my own money and being able to spend it how I wanted to.

During the school years, I would always have a job, and then I would save up all of my money during the school year. And then during the summer where a lot of my friends were doing things, you know, like hanging out with friends or like going to the skate park and stuff, I would just blow all my money and go somewhere and do something, you know? Like, mainly I did that like whenever I was in high school. But before that, I just have just always been working. It's something I kind of like pride myself in. But when I was 14 years old, my dad was a co-owner of a company known as Blackfoot resource group. And what this company did was they would clear land for basically like large-scale building projects.

I think of it as like cul-to-sacs, giant mansions out in the middle of nowhere, all types of different types of housing developments, golf courses. But mainly those two, like golf courses and large-scale housing developments. And I started working with him just because mainly I wanted to start learning how to use heavy machinery. I'd never done that before. And usually I wouldn't work over the summer. Usually I would just spend all my money over the summer. But he talked me into working with him over the summer. And he said, you know, travel a lot, mainly, you know, around the South.

But you'd get paid really, really good money. I think I was the only 14-year-old that was making, you know, right around $880 every two weeks, I think is like what my pay rate was. All under the table, of course. But I thought it was a good opportunity because I really wanted to learn how to use bulldozers, front end loaders, and track hose and things like that. And so I took them up on it. And it started becoming really, really fun, especially just being able to just be out in the middle of nowhere 24-7

and kind of having time to myself, just listening to music, driving around and doing what was needed. My main job that I did while in between learning how to use machines and everything is that It was basically a fire manager. So what we would do is whenever we would clear land. So we would start off, imagine, like, giant huge swath of, like, forest that they want to develop and turn into housing development of some kind. We would go in and first we would clear all the trees and make roads according to, you know, where the architects and the surveyors said that we needed to. and we would clear all those trees out. And the trees that were big enough,

we would sell to lumber yards or people that owned like mulch companies and things like that. And then the trees that were too small to sell for lumber, we would always just pile them in these large, giant piles, and then we would set them on fire and we'd just burn them. I don't necessarily know if that's the best way to go about doing it, but that's just what my dad's company did.

And it was me and the other co-owner's son, His name was Little Robert, and my name is Little Russell because we're both named after our fathers. And we would just drive around on this three-wheeler that had a diesel tank attached to the back of it. And we would either manage the fires, make sure that they're going, keeping them burning, and also making sure to check them to see if there is any type of spread or anything like that. We would throw water on them if they were getting a little too big. We would pour a little bit of diesel on them to get them to get them to. to pick back up to kind of burn a little bit quicker.

And then we would also refuel machines, depending on where anybody was at on these really, really large, large plots of land. And so that was pretty much what we did. We would make a route, know where all of our burn piles are. We would drive around all day, just checking on a pile, moving on to the next one, checking on it, moving on the next one.

Somebody would come in on a walkie-talkie and be like, hey, the front end loader is about to be out of juice. Can you come and fill it up? If the diesel tank rang out, we would go back to what would be like basically home base. So a lot of the times, especially in some of the more remote plots of land, instead of having all of us rent hotels and everything, so we would work on week on, week off schedules. So you would work for a week and then you would go home for a week. It was a lot of easier to rent these mobile homes or like these small mobile homes.

and they would drive them out and basically put them in the middle of the property and that's where everybody kind of lived and stayed was on these little mobile homes. And that way we didn't have to drive every single night, you know, sometimes anywhere between 30 to 45 minutes to get to the closest, you know, hotel.

This particular day that I'm talking about was taking place in like Okafinogi, Georgia. We were on this large property of land, a lot of, not necessarily so much Marquis, but there had a definitely like heavy cedar and cypress area and there had been plans that the center of the property there was going to be a large lake a man-made lake that we were in the process of digging out and then a bunch of roads that had just been cleared and we had just laid down dirt basically making them almost if you've ever been in like a national park they basically just looked like access roads at this point and then we were slowly carving out all of the different plots for all of the different houses that that. that were going to be there. Our route was on this big basic loop. Actually, it was, yeah, big huge loop

that would go around the perimeter of the property and then was intersected by other different access roads and planned roads that were gonna be developed way, wait later on. And it was about, I would say, probably about like 3.30 that we were on the southern side of the property and we were kind of just looking this fire, we just added a little bit of diesel to it. And we were kind of just sitting there

making sure that we were looking at it for a little while until we moved on to the next one to make sure that it wasn't going to jump. If there was any loose leaves or anything like that, we would rake it around the fire to make sure there was only dirt and trying to basically separate any type of fire line that might start. And I'm sitting on this three-wheeler. And Little Robert is in front of me, and he's kind of like looking at the fire pit, and he gets a blurp on the walkie-talkie, and it's my dad, and he's basically saying, I don't know if you guys can see it, but we just notice that there's going to be a huge storm heading in, and we don't work in the rain, you know, just because it makes everything that much more difficult. And so he said,

this one's probably going to be, looks like it's going to be pretty big, so you guys were just going to cut it for the day. Just head back to the mobile home. We're going to start making dinner early for everybody. And, you know, that's pretty much it. Just head back onto the house. And as soon as I went and I was like talking to him on the Wauki-Tocci, and I look at the Wauci-Taki, and it says 3.45 on the Wauki-Toki.

And I turn around looking at the southern side of the field. And it is definitely one of the largest storms. ever seen and I grew up in Florida. But it was just, it was coming up over the tree line on the far, far, far other side of the field, but it was just huge. It was taking up all the sky and it was just these giant, thick, heavy, dark clouds. And there's lots of thunder. I can see lightning every once in a while.

And so we hop on the three-wheeler and we start barreling down this access road. Robert would always, always speed on a three-wheeler. And it freaked me out. Like nobody's business, especially like any hill you jump over. My seat, my butt would get lifted up off the back of the three-hler and like slam back down. And there's plenty of times where he would like take a turn. And if anybody is familiar with three-wheelers, if you're going really fast and you take a turn too quickly, the first thing that thing's going to do is just immediately flip over and you're going to tumble off into who knows what.

And so he would literally hit a turn quick, just quick enough to where he would like lean over. And he would like ride, ride on two wheels for a little while and then freak me out and then jump it back down. So, needless to say, he's just hauling butt down this road. And I'm gripping on to the shoulders of his shirt. And I start immediately feeling raindrops. And these raindrops were like huge, you know, they were like pelting my back and my neck. It was very heavy rain, you know? It was like almost, I was like starting to get a back massage.

And it all basically came at once. It was like a curtain of water just zoomed over us. And now we're just in just constant, like super, super, super heavy rain. And the road immediately begins to get like super muddy. And mud is flying up. And it's getting all over my clothes. all over his clothes. And I'm trying to tell him, like, you know,

like, slow down. I can't see anything. And he's like, don't worry about it. I know what I'm doing. And it was just so hard to see just because, one, you have rain hitting in your face. You have mud flying up. And he's just gunning because he wanted to get out of the storm

and he wanted to get home. And there's a turn that's coming up. And as soon as, I guess he didn't see it because he would, you know, obviously he couldn't, you know, but there's what looked to be like a very, large log or tree limb that had basically, I guess, fallen, you know, right around that moment at the storm. I'd never seen it before in the road. And we usually, you know, anytime we would drive down the road and we would see something laying in the street, we'd pick it up and toss it off.

So I guess it would, it had fallen just recently from the storm. But, um, but yeah, he didn't see it. And I remember, like I remember the front of the street wheeler, you know, basically hitting this log. And I go off into the air. I see the grass and the bushes and the dirt and, like, just flying underneath me. Because I was up in the air, and it's the last thing that I truly remember. And as I, as my body's flying through the air, it begins, I begin to, it begin to twist. And my head begins to turn up towards the sky.

And for just a moment, I can see, like, the trees and the sky. and then everything just goes black. And I wrecked, I guess. The next thing that I remember is basically becoming aware that I was still laying. You know, I was like, I was awake, I guess, but my eyes currently weren't open. But I could see, you know, with my eyes closed, you know, you can see like the sun whenever it reflects through your eyes and your eyes are all orangey and yellow whenever you close your eyes. And that was the first thing that I consciously remember was like the sun like hitting my eyes and and I open my eyes and I can feel my hands in grass. And I am like feeling with my hands.

And one of the first things I notice is that like nothing's wet. And like the dirt in my hands was very dry, extremely dry. and I sit up and I'm in like about knee high tall grass and shrubs. And I'm looking around and there's no storm. There is, that's a bluebird day. You know, the sun is out and there, I can hear birds. I can hear, you know, mosquitoes and flies buzzing around. And I'm on the side of the road.

And I look. the first thing that I take notice of, you know, is the three-wheeler. And it's actually just parked right on the side of the road. And it's still running. And it's not, you know, broken. It's not, like, disheveled or covered in mud or anything like that. And it's just sitting there. It's just running.

And I turned my head around me and behind me where, because I literally, I was laying down and I just sat up. Like, I'm still, like, sitting on my butt. And right behind me was a tree branch. It was like a tree limb, like a very large tree limb. You know, I stand up, and I'm trying to, like, feel my body, trying to figure everything out. And I don't feel any physical pain.

I'm not bleeding. My clothes aren't disgusting and muddy, you know. The only thing that was really different was, that I had a bunch of grass on my butt, you know, from the grass. And right at that moment, I see little Robert coming out of the woods from the opposite side of the road. And he's, and he's, like, buckling up his pants. And I run over to him, and I'm just like, are you okay? You know, oh, my God, like, what happened to you, you know, like, what happened to the storm?

I'm very confused. He looks at me like I'm absolutely crazy. And he's just, he's like, what are you talking about? You know, I just had to go pee real quick. What are you doing laying in the grass? And I'm extremely perplexed. I'm extremely freaked out. And so I ask him for the walkie-talkie.

And I grabbed the walkie-talkie to walkie-talkie my dad. And as soon as I grab the walkie-talkie on the screen of the walkie-tucky, the first thing that happens whenever you light it up is that it shows the time first. I look at the walkie-talkie, and it says 2.36 p.m., which, again, did not make any sense to me whenever the last time that I looked at the walkie-talkie,

it said 3.45. And so I hit up my dad, and I'm asking him, you know, like, are you still at home base? Did the storm pass? We got in a wreck, you know? And he is asking, he's like, what storm are you talking about? You know, and I was like, the storm, the big, huge storm.

Like, there was, you know, and as I'm talking to him, I'm saying this, I'm like looking around and, you know, the road is dry. There is, there's no due on anything, you know. There's no storm clouds overhead. Everything is just completely clear. And it's like a normal day. And my dad basically was just like, I don't know. you're talking about if you're not feeling okay you know come back to the house and you know we'll talk but uh don't you stop like i think what he really thought was maybe i was messing around with him or

something later on um i asked him about that and he basically was just like you know we still got we still got work to do and the day's not over and so i had to work the whole entire rest of that day and um later on the day when we're eating dinner i'm constantly asking you know everybody like no, this happened. You know, like, I was in a wreck, and everybody just keeps looking at me, like, I'm a crazy person. And, and I, you know, that's pretty much, like,

the end of, like, the story part of it. But I've just, I've, I've never had an answer. I have never been able to figure out exactly how I was, I experienced something, you know, and I should have, you know, I should have had a, broken limb, you know, I should have had a concussion by the very least, you know, and, you know, asking my dad about it, he basically is, he's kind of under the impression of maybe I had a concussion. And, you know, whenever I go into him with all the details and everything, he basically

said that, you know, whenever Robert hopped off of the three-wheeler to go take a, to go, to go to take a leak out in the woods, I must have, must have, uh, hopped off the three-wheeler and, you know, did something on the other side and tripped and fall and hit my head and maybe suffered some type of concussion that changed my memories of the whole entire event. But it just doesn't really make a lot of sense to me because, and how could I have, you know, had a concussion woken up from it and been perfectly fine and coherent afterwards with only the span of about two minutes, which was what Robert said was the only time that he was away from me, you know, because he said, you know, I had to take a pee. So I stopped a three wheeler, hopped off to go take

a leak. And I came back and you were running through the grass, like a crazy person, asking me about some storm, you know? And yeah, and so like, yeah, to this day, I have no idea what it happened, but it did happen to me, you know? I remember the day and incredibly, incredibly well, and it's just something I've never been able to have an explanation for. As far as, you know, like all the events leading up until that moment, everything else, according to talking with Robert, happened the exact same except whenever we were on the south side of the property. You know, he remembers, you know, that particular fire patch.

And he said all we did was, you know, we threw some diesel on it. We looked at it for a little while. And then we left and we started going along the route, which was along the northeast side of the plot of land. And even that, to me, also, doesn't make any sense at all because if I looked at that walkie-talkie and it said 3.45, how come the next time that I looked at it, it said 236. And there's just a lot of things that don't make sense

about the whole entire ordeal, mainly that everybody that I've ever talked to about it that was there that day, or Little Robert in particular, just say that that never happened. Okay, so this is a very strange story, and for that reason, I'm sure everybody has a ton of questions. I certainly did. That's why the second half of this episode is going to be me asking Russell a lot of those questions. I don't know if we're ever going to have all the answers to what happened.

if you ask me personally, I don't think it matters if we have all of the answers. My opinion is that Russell, to Russell, he was given a second chance. And I personally think it would be best if he just took that as a gift and carried on with his life. That being said, I don't think human nature allows us to simply do that. We always have a ton of questions. We always want to explain things away. that's just kind of how we are unfortunately we tend to focus on the bad and ignore the good usually or forget about it um so i had a ton of questions for russell this is an edited down version of

those questions i included the most relevant answers i tried to include all of the relevant answers but just so you know there's obviously a million questions i asked him that weren't included because they didn't have an answer or the answer was not helpful okay we have to take a quick break but we will be right back so let's get back into it okay i have a lot of questions totally so this is not what i want to ask first but i think we need to tackle it first because this is what everybody's going to be asking the log you pointed out the log um how big was the log you know, like I said, I'm a woodworker, so you learn how to like eyeball lengths, you know, but it was about as a little bit thicker than my thigh, you know, it was, it's not necessarily like,

like a log that you lay down to chop other wood on top of, you know, so it's not necessarily anything like that large, but it was large enough to where that type of break on it, you know, wouldn't make sense to me, you know, like thinking about it in hindsight, like wood doesn't break like that, you know, unless it's like petrified or something, you know, that's the only time that you try and see that that jaggy, like, rock like crack, you know, but it was literally just cracked open. It was, it was, it was cracked in half. Yes, it was completely cracked in half and it was indented into the, into the ground, like,

ever so slightly, you know, but it also, you know, it didn't, and I don't necessarily know if I can, like, say this with 100% certainty just because I, you know, I am, like, talking. about a memory. But from the way that it looked, it didn't look like it was just there. You know, it looked like it had been there for a while. You know, it wasn't like any type of debris or anything like that that made it look like it had fallen there. It looked like it, I mean, obviously it had fallen there. Was there a tree nearby? There are so many trees nearby. Oh, okay. There's like forests. Yeah, there's like forests on opposite side, mainly like pine and cedar, I believe. My next question was going to be if it looked like it had been there because you could kind of

Yes. It did look like it had been there for a while. So it didn't look like I, like, it wouldn't have looked like my head had been the one that had broken that limb, you know. And it looks like it had been there. So you could have just as easily laid down and been like, hey, I'm going to rest my head on this, use a log as a pillow. Totally, totally. Yeah. And it would have been about that, that size to where I could have laid down and like rested my head on it. But definitely thick enough, like I said, to where you couldn't just. break it with your own two hands or you know it would have it would have been a lot of force to be able to just break something like that that was that thick you know i yeah because i know that's what people are going to jump to but i don't think that's the case for a few reasons but mainly you are your construct you've done construction obviously you worked for this company um or you're a woodworker now you know wood and And you saw this log and you know that if this log hit a 14-year-old boy in the head,

it would at least hurt, if not kill you. Yeah, no. At the very, very least, it would have definitely hurt. And for my little boy noggin, you know, to be able to hit it with that amount of force, at the very least, there would have been blood. And, yeah, no, a very serious concussion, you know. Did you have pain? If not, like, my brain would have been splattered.

No, I had no pain. Like I said, I was perfectly fine. I felt extremely coherent, you know, besides the fact that, you know, obviously things weren't adding up in that regard, you know, but I didn't have any bruises. And with the amount that I flew, because I, like, I remember going into the air. And like, like I said, the last, like, some of the last things that I saw was the, like, the grass and the bushes, like zooming underneath me. And then my body turned in a counterclockwise.

motion right toward right before I blacked out. So I remember spinning kind of a little bit to the counterclockwise. And I kind of remember seeing like the tops of the trees and then like the stormy sky. And then that's like right before I blacked out. And so that amount of speed, you know, like we weren't wearing helmets. You know what I mean? We didn't, we didn't even, we barely wore eye protection, you know. So if I was fly, if I got thrown from that three later, because we were, we were hauling.

You know, we were trying, like, Robert wanted to get home. You know, he did not want to be wet. And the amount that it was raining, it was just, it was so much rain. I've never, I mean, I've grown up in Florida all my life and you have all day rainstorms, you know, sometimes multiple days where it'll just be raining the whole entire time, but not like, like, the best way that I could describe it is like, you know how whenever Forrest Gump starts, in the movie Forest Gump and he starts talking about all the different types of rain, you know? And like this was big heavy rain in his words, you know. It was just, it was so much rain. And yeah, and I got thrown because we were hauling. So if I did hit it, right, there's no way that I could have just got up without even a bruise.

Like I said, I didn't, I didn't have a bruise. There was no blood. I didn't have a headache. I didn't have anything. It was like I woke up from a nap, you know. I could tell how vivid of a memory this is. you're still eliminating the possibility that like the crash did happen to you like you're still in the mindset that maybe it did because you're saying yeah yeah it's like and i know because like

that that was your day like that was the day did it did it it seems to me that it feels like you lived this certain day and then jumped into a different timeline is that correct yeah that's I guess the way that you could definitely put it, yeah, is that I remember, you know, all of the events that led up to it. And it was, like I said, it was just a normal, boring day beforehand, you know, and it's, and then all of the sudden, you know, my dad comes in the walkie-taki, and he's like, hey, there's this big storm coming in. And then I turn around, and literally, it's just right over the tree line on the far other side of this large hayfield, you know and um and then at that point you know my brain kind of got sidetracked because robert's like

let's get let's get on the bike let's go you know i don't want to be i don't want to have to ride through the rain and um and it was moving so fast because we were on three-wheeler for i guess it maybe maybe 10 minutes maybe 10 minutes before it just came over us like a curtain and it was just all of a sudden boom rain everywhere thunder um lightning and um And then, yeah, and then we hit that log. And the log also, another thing, like, when I woke up, the log was gone. That log that was in the road wasn't even there. Were you in the same area when you woke up?

Yes. Yes. Well, I wouldn't say, like, if anything, I was a little bit after that curve where we hit the log, you know. Oh, that's interesting because you... Not like a large distance, though. You know, like, if I could think about it anyway, if I was to get thrown, own from that three-willer, right? I would have, I would have, I woke up probably, like, where I would assume I would have landed, you know, because I got thrown off to the right. And, and it was, like, kind of pretty much, like, right on the other side of the turn. But that's interesting because you

let's, by the way, just for the sake of ease, let's call the timeline where you were in the storm, like that day, let's call that timeline one. And timeline two is whatever Robert Jr. and everybody else was in Timeline 2. You woke up in Timeline 2, let's just say that. So I find it interesting because in Timeline 1, that started, where it started to stray off, that was in a way different area, and you rode through chaos and rain and ended up exactly in the same spot where you woke up in timeline 2, which...

But earlier in the day. Earlier in the day. Yeah, another thing that makes no sense at all to me, you know. So that leads me to my other question of when do you think these timelines went out of sync? Like, is there a point where your day and Robert Jr.'s day matches up, like the morning? Yeah, I actually called him about this because I haven't talked to him in 13 years, but I called him and had a very fun, awkward conversation, having to make him try and relive. of this whole experience.

But basically, we remember everything pretty much the exact same way leading up right until we took that break at the southern side of a field. We'll call it like Burn Pile 1, basically. And he says, like, the only kind of like real difference was he said that we didn't spend a lot a lot of time there. We went there. We did, you know, we checked on it, threw a little bit of diesel on it, sat there for maybe, you know, a minute to two, two minutes making sure that it's, you know, burning okay and like small, you know, because we didn't ever want, you know, whenever you're doing this, like these burn pals, you don't want the flames to be large. You want them to be burning in the center. And you want it to be low fire and slowly burning as everything kind of collapses in on it. And so we just made sure that there wasn't any like embers that were going to be, like, lifting off anytime soon or anything like that. and, you know, raked it out a little bit, and then we, you know, left. But to my memory, we were kind of hanging out there for a little while because he had to manage it a little bit more because it wasn't like it was completely out

when we got there. And so we were hanging out there for a little bit more, a longer of time. And then my dad hits me up on the walkie-talkie and, you know, everything continues after that. But that's, to me, that even kind of adds more confusion. to the thing because of the whole time difference, you know? If when I checked that walkie-talkie, it was 345, and then when I checked it the second time, it was 236. Like, I can't do that math in my head,

but it's roughly right around anywhere between 30 to 45 minute difference, you know. So that difference is about how long you would have stayed at that burn pile, like kind of tending to it, maybe? In normal circumstances, no, not unless it needed to be micromanaged, you know. Like sometimes we would hang out at a burn pile just because there was a lot more leaves, you know, on the pile than... But in your memory? You were kind of comfortable.

In my memory, we were hanging out there for, I would say, maybe eight to ten minutes. We were hanging out there before I got hit up on the walkie-talkie about the storm. But when you saw the... the time for the storm, did that time make sense to you? Yes. That time made total sense to me. And we had been, as far as everything else throughout that entirety of the day, you know, everything was moving accordingly. But, you know, I guess like in timeline too, you know, which is Little Roberts timeline, everything just moved that much quicker, if that makes sense. you know, like, I don't have an, that's another, like, I just don't have an explanation for why it was 345 when I looked at the walkie-talkie.

And then 2, 2, yeah, to like 236, I believe, whenever I looked at the second time. It doesn't make sense. If everything was happening in the same moments leading up to this time, why is there that big of a time difference? And the only explanation that I could have is if we're talking about them, these two timelines, like moving in sync with one another, you know, is that everything that happened in Little Roberts timeline, you know, the timeline too, it was better, just happened that much quicker, you know, like in the, in the cabinetry world, if you ever look at cabinet doors, right, there's these, there's reveals that we call them reveals that are in between each door,

you know, and usually the standard is like an eighth inch reveal. So in between each cabinet door, there's about an eighth. And whenever you're installing cabinet doors and you have to cal, and you're basically like adjusting them so that they all match, you know. If you leave like, you know, like a 30 second extra on the left side of the door and you have like a row of eight, you know, that adjustment, right, multiplies as you get through every single door. And then once you get to the last door, all of those 30,

seconds of an inch now out to add up to that last door being like a quarter out of square or something, you know? And so that's the only way that I can maybe like kind of like process that in my head as far as like trying to make sense of it is that everything just happened just to scoge quicker throughout that day to where at the very end of it whenever I'm now, you know, sitting up in the grass, you know, add it up to a different time. I really like that comparison. It also is just indicative of how you think and how your mind works. And to me, you're so far off from the type of person that's vibe-based and, you know,

kind of floating through the world. Like, you know, me, I'm, I lose track of, myself, I lose track of time. I'm in my own head. not paying attention to the details sometimes. You do not seem like that to have a person. Also, you've had a job since you were 13. It just does not seem, I can eliminate that possibility. Yeah, no, like one of the best things that you can do

to ever keep a job is punctuality, you know? So I've always been, I'm not in any way, shape, or form like a vibe type of person. I don't, like, believe in ghosts or anything like that. I am very straight to the point and I believe, you know, on what I can test and like what I can, you know, experience. And, you know, everybody telling, like, my dad mainly being like, oh, you probably just had a weird micro concussion or something. Like, I would love to believe that, you know, because that's a solid answer. You know what I mean?

Like, that's, that there's science I can put behind that. And like, oh, okay, that's, that's, that's Occam's razor. You know, like the simplest answer is usually the most correct. But I've, you know, I grew, I moved to Colorado. Whenever I turned 18 after I got done hiking Appalachian Trail, I was like, I'm never going to live anywhere where there aren't mountains, you know. And so I moved to Colorado and I snowboarded a lot. And I had a lot of friends that got concussions, like my roommate got a concussion.

And I had to pick them up from the hospital, you know. And there's the constant like reset of memory after you get a concussion. I only know this from my roommate because like when I had to pick him off in the hospital constantly, the whole entire time I'm like walking him out of the hospital. He kept asking me, he's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what's going on? Like, where are we at again? And I'm like, dude, you had a concussion. I'm bringing you home.

He'd be like, oh, okay, okay. Was I snowboarding? Yeah, dude, you were snowboarding. Just let's just hop on the bus and let's just go home. And then as soon as we got on the bus, he'd all of a sudden have another freak out. He's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, where are we? What's going on? You know, and I had to constantly retell him, you know, like, hey,

hey, you had a concussion. You know, so the only reason why I don't, like, believe I had a concussion is because it was only two minutes, apparently, from when Robert saw me, you know, hanging out on the back of a three-wheeler, he stops it. He goes off into the woods to go take a piss, and then he comes back and he sees me running out of the grass, you know, it was that short amount of time. So if I did get some type of small concussion, you know, one, like, how would I be able to wake up from that and still have perfect clarity, you know, and not, well, clarity up into the

point that I'm saying, you know, something happened to me that, you know, that nobody else believes. But I wouldn't have been able to just jump up and just been perfectly fine, you know. Did you have adrenaline? Oh, yeah. You were still rushing from, like, the crash you thought you were in. Yeah, like, well, not only that, it was, like, the sheer shock of, like, like, you just, you know, like you just experienced this. It happened to you. It's in your head, you know, and then you're up and you're trying to figure everything out, like that type of, that level of,

like, I don't necessarily if I would call it an anxiety or anything, you know, but it was just the sheer shock of the switch, you know what I mean? Like, my adrenaline was definitely pumping, and it was, I would, I would keen it more to just kind of like the panic that I was kind of in because it was just, none of it made sense, you know? Like, I was just, you know, like, I was just, just there. And I was just covered in rain and mud and I had just flown through the air. And, you know, and I had gotten, you know, I had like fallen off the three wheeler before. And that alone was just scary enough to me, you know. So that level of, like I said, that thing, it, we hit it fast, you know, and I got thrown. And, um, let me ask you this too. Yeah.

The log on the ground, I know people are going to trip up on it. And, and I know people are going to trip up on it and like to be i i've personally been able to pretty much eliminate it but how many logs are in the area where you're at is it like a forest yeah it's definitely a forest um so there's logs all over the place yeah yeah but not necessarily like um the so florida like forest there's usually not a lot of like super thick you know like old old old trees especially like at least in the area that we were working in you know um it's more along the lines of like there's these solid little, like, tight groves that kind of, like, grow in the area. I believe if I, you know, I think it would probably be anywhere like cedar or maybe some more

skinny maples that were kind of, like, in the area. And so you wouldn't see, like, if you're ever, if you're, if anyone's familiar with, like, you know, like hiking around forests, like, for example, like in Colorado, you'll see huge, like, basically like overgrown tree graveyards where there's just a bunch of, limbs and trunks all stacked, like, just broken all over top of each other. So it wasn't necessarily, like, there were logs everywhere, but there weren't logs like that. You know what I mean? It wasn't like thick, huge, like trees that you have to climb over that have fallen, like, you know, who knows how long, you know, it was a lot more sparser. But yeah, there were logs like all throughout

the forest area. I'm sure some people might think, like, oh, you know, you guys are working with like diesel fumes, like maybe you inhaled something, like maybe something you're burning. Do you think that's a possibility? I mean... No, no, I don't think that's a possibility. Diesel doesn't, one, diesel doesn't work the same way that gasoline does whenever you use it as a, as like an igniter, you know? It doesn't, like explode. Like gasoline does, it more along the lines like just burns a little bit deeper. And the fumes from diesel, like, we were never like covered in the stuff or anything like that we would just back the three wheeler up

close enough and then we had a nozzle like a small little spray nozzle that was hooked up on one side of the tank and then the other side had basically like you what you would see at like a gas station you know and there's a little motor that's on top of the diesel tank and it basically causes it to give you enough pressure to kind of like spray it out and we never we would only ever use the like the gas station style pump to refuel machines. We would use this other. It's like smaller, smaller sprayer. And we weren't dowsing these things.

You know, it was more you spray just a little bit to kind of get a fire going, more in the center of the burn pile. And then you kind of like let it do its thing. You know, you don't want to just, it's not like we're like driving around the woods willy-nilly just spraying diesel fuel everywhere. You know, it was, you would spray just a little bit, get the fire going. and then, you know, kind of let it go. If it started to die, you know,

you spray just a little bit more, keep it going again, and then just keep watching it. And you guys were doing this every day, too, so it would be likely that it would have happened before, or maybe it would have been likely that Russell, or a little Richard. Robert. It's a little Robert, man, it's hard, I know, yeah.

A little Robert would have probably experienced, the same thing if you guys were inhaling something weird. Oh yeah, totally. No. And like to be like I know this is going to sound like really gross, but I've, my dad would tell me stories about how he once caught his workers actually like drinking the diesel fuel to be able to get like drunk off of it. And I don't know if that was just a tall tale by him, you know, but if if you can drink it, you know, I don't know if necessarily think it would have that like kind of instantaneous like psychedelic effect, if any, if you were to try and breathe it in, you know, because that would probably be happening to people at

gas stations all the time, you know. Yeah, and I mean, I don't know what in the forest of Florida could have, like, naturally produced that. Yeah, I mean, trust me, I have a lot of friends in Florida who, if there was something in the forest that could make you hallucinate like that, they would have found it. Yeah, yeah, like the closest thing that I've ever came across is that I was once, like, walking around the woods with my brother-in-law, and we were, uh, he had, like, was like the first time that I ever got to, like, shoot a gun, you know? And he, like, stops at, like, a cow patty,

and he's just like, oh, my God, these are mushrooms, you know? And he grabbed that. That's the closest thing that I've ever heard of, like, you know, wild, uh, psychotropic, uh, plants or, you know, what have you being just in, just naturally in the woods, you know. But they don't even do that to you. No, no, not that, not that quickly either, you know. And, no. And I trust me, I didn't eat, I wasn't eating mushrooms at the time that I was 14 years old, even though I am from Florida and everybody thinks that. Oh, well, let me ask you this then. What do you make of this? What do you think happened to you if you had to just look back on this and like gunned to your head really take a guess? Yeah. I have, like I said, I'm a very simple person when it comes to how I look at the world and everything.

You know, I don't believe in oras. I don't believe in ghosts or, you know, astrology or anything like that. And so I've never really had anything close to an answer until I was actually in college at C. Colorado Mountain College, go Eagles. I had a professor there. It was actually my art history professor. And I was having this, I basically, you know, told her the whole story because she was kind of, we were kind of like going back and forth. like I can't remember exactly what her story was, but just like, you know, sharing like weird things that

have happened to us, you know, and I kind of like described it to her. And I was just like, I know you're going to look at me like I'm crazy, you know, but it is what it is. This is kind of how I experienced it. And I don't, you know, I don't really have an answer for it. And she starts talking to me about like the whole like many worlds theory of quantum mechanics. And in particular, one kind of like fringe idea that involves with the many world theory, which is the thing known as quantum immortality. And basically how she described it to me was that, you know, there's like a binary relationship between an observer and the observed. And, you know, reality itself, if there's nothing to observe, you know, reality, if there's nothing to be able to see it, then you can't

100% prove that it exists, right? And that goes vice versa. You know, if you, don't have anything to base your observations off of, then you can't prove that, you know, that you exist. Like if you, if I cut off every single one of my senses and then removed my memory, right, I would, I would have no frame of reference or anything like that to be able to observe that I actually was here, you know. And she says that she was talking to me and she was basically saying, you know, like, whenever you make a decision, she's like, say you're at a cliff, you know, and you're deciding whether or not you're going to jump off the cliff. whenever you make that decision, you know, and the idea of this thought experiment will just say, you know, reality fractures into two, you know, and like the large scale of things, reality fractures into like a bunch of different possibilities, you know, like infinitesimal amount. But for this thought experiment, we'll just say two, you know, one being where you die, and the other being where you live, you know, she's like, if you, the reality that you jumping off the cliff and you die, you know, like, that's it. You're not observing anything anymore. You can't observe your own.

existence. So therefore, the one that keeps going, you know, is the one where you decided not to jump off the cliff and you continue to observe and therefore reality continues to exist in that dimension. And she's like, now think about it this way, you know, like imagine you keep walking, you walk away from that first cliff and you keep going on with your life and then you get to another cliff and you have to make the decision on whether or not you're going to jump off. And then again, reality fractures at that point. And then you get to another cliff and then to another cliff and then to another cliff. So the only way that I would have been able to get concussion, right, is if I, you know, he goes into the woods, you know, I hop off the three-wheeler and what, like I trip on a rock and hit my head on that log or something, you know, like that's not enough force to break that log. And if I did get knocked out, there's no way that I'm just going to jump back up perfectly fine without a welt or a cut or anything on my head within the span of two minutes.

I've never seen anybody recover from a concussion that quickly or, you know, have that level of clarity. after it happened, you know. So it's just I have, I can't, I can't prove that, you know what I mean? Like I can't figure out a concussion theory, you know, all that I know is that, according to everybody else that was on that job site, you know, on that, on that plot of land that day working, it never happened. And I'm the only one that experienced it. But yeah, yeah.

How has it affected the way you look at the world? Well, one, you know, second chances are awesome. So if I, you know, if apparently I did die that day, you know, and I'm now living in like a parallel dimension or whatever, I'm pretty thankful that I'm still alive and I'm still kicking and I'm still here, you know? I think, you know, I just try to make sure that I'm always doing good and, like, making myself proud in a way, if that makes sense. And so if I had to say, you know, reflecting on that day, what I would say is that there's certain things in your life that you're just never going to get answers to. and sometimes that's okay because you can you can drive yourself really really a crazy

over obsessing about something that not only will you never be able to figure out but also doesn't necessarily need an answer you know like I've lived a great and successful life so far in my opinion without that ever being answered you know and at this point you know like if anybody has has a wants to help me figure it out, that's super cool. But if I never do, you know, I'm okay with that. And, you know, I know, in the wise words of my grandfather, I know enough to know when I, I know enough to know that I don't need to know. You know what I mean? So. I think the craziest, maybe the saddest part of all of this is that, you know, I almost forgot myself that you basically were given a second chance.

Like, as close to a true miracle as one could ask for, dying and being drunk. I hate using the M word, but, you know. I mean, it's close to that. I mean, like, the closest thing I've ever heard to that of being given a second life, basically. Like, you died, and then you woke up an hour before, and this didn't happen. And the funny thing is that you didn't even get time to enjoy it. You didn't jump for joy or anything. You were just immediately confused and have been kind of tortured by this.

usually ever since it's like yeah yeah i mean i wouldn't necessarily say tortured but yeah definitely it's it's kind of annoying you know but um it's funny how we work like that yeah it's never good enough is it like yeah totally right um but i think like you know yeah like calling it a second chance you know calling it a gift in my eyes you know that's that's kind of all that matters was that you know i am here now and i am a gift you know well i mean i was given a gift and i don't know necessarily need to know who gave it to me, you know, or, you know, I just know that the fact that it was given to me and therefore I need to, if I want to say anything like on the moralistic way of how I look at life after this event is that, you know, I've done my best to honor the fact that

I'm still, you know, around and that, you know, that I'm still kicking and living a beautiful life and I'm still able to experience love and, you know, adventure and all. these things. So I don't, you know, I don't, I don't worry about too much hardcore about, you know, how it happened or, you know, if it was aliens or if it was this or if it was that, you know, like that doesn't, to me, that doesn't necessarily matter as much as the fact that it totally did happen to me. And because of that, you know, I'm still able to sit here today and have this story with you, you know. All right. That brings us to the end of this episode. Like I said, I'm sure everybody has a range of interpretations of this story. For me, I think it's pretty

fascinating and profound. I think many people would describe what Russell experienced as a miracle. Russell said that he does not want to use the M word as he described it, but I think a lot of people would look at it as simply that, a great gift. He's flying through the air to his death, and I've never been in that situation, but if I was, I'm sure I'd find myself begging for a second chance. And he was given that. He woke up on the ground, completely fine, in a different day. I don't know how to explain that, but I'd say that based on his lived experience, he's a very lucky guy. So maybe it's best if he were to just accept it for what it is and be very grateful instead of asking a million questions about it

and kind of agonizing about it over the years. But that's kind of in our nature. With that being said, thank you so much to Russell for telling the story. I should point out, we did reach out to Little Robert, and he was able to confirm the details, but did not want to participate in the podcast itself. So in case you were wondering, yeah, we did talk to Little Robert.

But thanks again, Russell, for telling the story, This has been episode 16, and you've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our theme song is by Coberman. The soundtrack of this episode is by North Americans. Editing and Engineering by Theo Schaefer. The artwork for our show is by Coldestack Studios. This is an independent show, so please show us your support by subscribing,

leaving a five-star review, and telling your friends about the show. If you want to follow us on social media, we're at Otherworld Pod on Instagram, and Twitter. Also, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, supernatural or unexplained, you could send us the story at Stories at Otherworldpod.com. Also, we still have merch for sale. If you want to check that out, it's otherworldpod.com.